The article was last updated at 5:56 p.m.
The verdict is not final, the 35-year-old asked for time to think about it, and the public prosecutor did not make any statement for the time being.
The man had evaded a police check and caused several accidents while fleeing from the police, in which three people were seriously injured. Above all, he drove straight at two police officers who had stood in his way and had to jump out of the way at the last second to avoid being hit. The jury rated this procedure as attempted murder by a vote of 7:1 and thus shared the view of the prosecution, which had assumed that the defendant had at least a partial intention to kill.
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“He would have completely crushed me”
A roadblock had been set up in the Gaudenzdorfer Belt – Eichenstrasse area, which the speeder avoided by hitting a vehicle with his Jaguar and heading towards the police over a traffic island. “I stood in front of him with my gun drawn and said ‘Stop! Police! Stop!’ called,” one of the officers later said. Regardless, the driver “drove over the traffic island at full speed. Without taking me into consideration. He simply didn’t give a damn. He would have completely knocked me down one hundred percent.”
As a traffic expert now explained, the Jaguar was not traveling at 70 to 80 km/h at that time – as originally assumed by the public prosecutor’s office – but at a maximum of 30 km/h. In the event of a collision with the police officers at this speed, “serious, but usually not fatal, injuries would have been expected,” said forensic pathologist Nikolaus Klupp.
“I didn’t think anything of it”
The 35-year-old denied having acted with intent to kill. He “would have driven through a gap” and “could have braked at any time,” he assured the jury. He certainly didn’t have any intention to kill: “I didn’t think anything of it.”
The defendant had bought a Jaguar that was over 20 years old and no longer registered for traffic from his cousin. The car mechanic no longer had a driver’s license – it was confiscated from him in 2017 for drunk driving. On his very first ride he caught the attention of a civilian patrol. At an intersection on the Mariahilfer Belt, the police officers noticed the man behind the wheel casually dangling his left arm out of the open side window with a joint in his hand. They also noticed the smell of cannabis and wanted to check the driver. He then stepped on the accelerator and drove away from the police officers who gave chase.
At least 10 people in danger
As a result, the 35-year-old crossed several intersections at excessive speed despite the red light, endangering other road users and pedestrians who were crossing the road when the green light was green. The public prosecutor interpreted this as intentional endangerment of the community – the physical integrity of at least ten people was in danger. The 35-year-old confessed to this charge and the jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict.
The same applied to the grossly negligent assault he was accused of causing bodily harm to a cyclist. The defendant caught him at Matzleinsdorfer Platz by driving into his rear wheel and causing him to fall. The fact that the 46-year-old was wearing a helmet may have saved his life. The cyclist hit his head against a hard object – probably the asphalt floor – and suffered a severe concussion, but no broken bones. The helmet that was destroyed in the accident “probably prevented a fatal traumatic brain injury and a skull fracture. The helmet may have saved his life,” noted forensic pathologist Klupp.
Traveling as a ghost driver
At the Landstraßer Belt the speeder finally got into the opposite lane and continued his journey as a wrong-way driver. He crashed into an oncoming car containing a family of four. The mother, who was sitting in the passenger seat, was seriously injured. She suffered fractures of several thoracic vertebrae and a cervical vertebra as well as a torn cruciate ligament and lateral meniscus tear in her right knee. There was no danger to the life of the 52-year-old. Her husband suffered a fractured scaphoid bone and a broken radius.
Only after this collision did the Jaguar finally come to a stop. The driver tried to escape, but was caught by the police. As it turned out, the man was only released from prison in the Czech Republic on January 12, 2023 after serving a prison sentence of several years. In spring 2019 he was caught in Brno without a driver’s license with a significant amount of cannabis and several pistols and a Kalashnikov in the trunk. At that time too, he tried to evade police checks and led the Czech police on a dangerous chase across Brno. He was sentenced to seven years in prison for, among other things, endangering the community, drug-related offenses, illegal possession of weapons and other offenses and was released early for good behavior after half of his sentence had been served.
Mother lost her nerve
While the 35-year-old remained calm during and after the verdict was announced, his mother, who was in the audience, freaked out. “You have no hearts!” she shouted angrily at the jury before storming out of the hearing room. Further expressions of displeasure followed through the open door (“15 years for nothing. He didn’t do anything”, “That’s inhumane!”) before a possessive judge asked a media representative to close the door.
